UNDER THE SURFACE

Janus la Cour and Rikke Benborg 

June 13 - August 16, 2009

 Janus la Cour (1837-1909) was one of the last of the Late Romantic Danish landscape painters. In his paintings he maintained the idyllic view of nature of the great painters from the Danish Golden Age and painted his motifs with an almost photographic precision. The source of many of his motifs was the area around Aarhus, where he spent his childhood as well as the last twenty years of his life. Based at the farm Langballegård near the village of Mårslet, where he lived from 1888 to his death in 1909, he painted familiar scenes from Djursland; slopes, beaches and hills on the peninsula of Helgenæs; and the sea seen from Risskov. The exhibition Under the Surface, which marks the centennial of Janus la Cour’s death, presents a selection of his works with local themes owned by the Municipality of Aarhus and private collectors.

The video artist Rikke Benborg (b. 1973) participates at the exhibition with a new work that enters into a direct dialogue with Janus la Cour. Her focus is directed towards the topics lying just below the surface like emptiness and life’s shady sides. Rikke Benborg is obviously well versed in the history of art and culture and several of her former works have surreally distorted landscapes as their starting point. The dialogue between the two artists can help re-interpret Janus la Cour in a different time and a different medium, but it’s also an attempt to highlight the relevance of historic genres for contemporary painting.

Rikke Benborg graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2006 and the last seven years she has participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions in Denmark as well as in other countries. In 2008 Rikke Benborg received a 3-year work grant from the Danish Arts Foundation.

The exhibition has been arranged as a collaboration between the Aarhus Art Building and the Municipality of Aarhus and is presented as a part of the celebrations in connection with the centennial of the National Exhibition 1909 in Aarhus.